The Haltiwanger Method of Self-Defense: Part 1

As a man of the mind, many people believe that when it comes to the pugilistic arts they can wipe the floor with me as if I were some kind of mop or maybe a dishcloth that's been so previously soiled you don't mind using it to soak up some spilled chicken blood, your urine from the previous evening's festivities or dabbing the drool from the jowls of your aged and incontinent three-legged dog before throwing said cloth on the dung heap (if you don't have a dung heap check with your neighbours to see if you can use theirs-most modern homes come with a dung heap these days). For instance, just recently as I was combing the alleyway behind my local doughnut shop where they discard the doubly day-old doughnuts in the dumpster, a situation where one must be fast-thinking and fleet of foot to beat the hungry crows and shopping cart pushing derelicts to score the pot-of-dough at the end of the oil and antifreeze pooled rainbow where the dumpster bin wheels tend to rest (fortunately the derelicts suffer from sore and hideously-swollen feet plus their shopping carts, overloaded with everything from hubcaps to dismantled mannequin bodies, slows them down considerably giving me the advantage whereas the crows are a whole different story), a group of ne'er-do-wells in matching soiled tracksuits and alopecia haircuts heckled me with all manner of derisive commentary as I sought to snag myself a few bags from the day-old day-old doughnut treasure chest. Perhaps it was my tweed overcoat or eyeglasses held together with masking tape that gave me away as  man of culture and good breeding, one who has collected academic accolades as if they were gift baskets such as one might receive after a double hernia operation and is flown willy-nilly around the globe to give commanding talks and lectures on topics as varied as the effects of Tiddlywinks on the placement of suburban American strip mall shopping cart return stalls or the movements of jellyfish (specifically the Australian Box Jellyfish) as a template for winning competition arm wrestling tournaments. Either way, these hooligans misjudged me as I was able to swiftly halt them in their tracks using my own soon-to-be-patented Haltiwanger method of self defense. That I defecated in my pants was actually of the utmost importance as it is one of my signature moves that, when combined with the "gesticulating flipper-slap hands of death," attacks not only the enemy's body but also their senses with the ability to render them from unconscious to simply disgusted. Nevertheless, they'll be running for the hills faster than you can spell diarrhea out loud to a group of octogenarians wearing hearing aids by the side of a busy highway. 

Here, the basic mechanics of the "gesticulating flipper slap-hands of death" is illustrated showing all of this lethal move's subtle intricacies. Although this diagram utilizes the arm of an early 19th century fortune-telling automaton (The Magnificent Voltron to be exact), it is completely accurate in the breakdown of a human arm's movements, without of course the "bicep electronic buzzer trigger," (see Nos. 32 & 34), which lets the handler know when the robotic device's triceps ratchets are jammed. Otherwise, expect your arm and hand to work just like this, an efficient killing machine functioning in perfect harmony, and that would make any creature with flippers green with envy (note: some of that green may be due to seaweed or algae as many creatures with flippers are of the aquatic variety but nevertheless, they will be jealous, believe you me).

Now, you may encounter hoodlums and goons such as the ones mentioned above but truly, there are so many different types of thugs out there on the streets and in the alleyways just waiting to get their hands on your money or doughnuts so it's best to be prepared for any situation. With the Haltiwanger Method of Self-Defense you will be ready, able and confident to thwart any of these deadbeats or at least send them back to the hellhole where they were spawned. If that hellhole is filled up well then, they can always find accommodation in one of the many wonderful albeit run-down motels that line the waterfront or outskirts of your city. How does the Haltiwanger Method of Self-Defense train you for these eventualities? Easy. First off, it all begins in the mind, not the body. One must simply think of the human brain as a place where a switchboard operator sits at a busy terminus, a bit beleaguered with all the incoming calls and transfers to the appropriate parties as shown in the diagram below. You can make your switchboard operator male or female, it's really a matter of choice and what you feel most comfortable with but I like to make mine a woman and I've named her Nancy and she looks really good in a cashmere sweater, knee-length skirt, low black pumps and lightly tousled hair. Her favourite foods are calamari, beef jerky and salamander paste and on weekends she likes to go water-skiing and spend time whittling birch branches into carrot-shaped magic wands that she then uses to cast spells on the evil mushroom-people that live inside the walls of her basement apartment.   

Here is the magnificent and mysterious human brain at work. In previous times this image might have depicted a semaphore flag signaller or even a Morse code operator but in this technological age a switchboard operator is more accurate. As one can see, the human brain is a busy place and it's a wonder anyone can do anything like, say, figuring out a crossword puzzle while belching simultaneously let alone "flipper-slapping" an opponent to the ground while barking out the ingredients to an apple strudel recipe (Haltiwanger self-defense move #34).

So, with all these various calls and signals and crossed wires and such, it's a wonder that Nancy can get anything efficiently done but the Haltiwanger Method of self-defense trains your Nancy or Bill or Mildred or Phil to keep the circuits clear when danger is near and only use those signals that are integral to your own protection. Thus, for example, some goon is walking towards you on a darkened street and instead of you musing on whether to use chopped onion in your tuna fish salad that you're going home to make or wondering what colour underwear your secretary wears and whether she walks around the house in them with nothing else on when she gets home from work while idly restringing her badminton racket and heating up some egg rolls in a toaster oven her mother gave her for her birthday even though she has no plum sauce, your brain immediately zeroes in on the imminent predicament heading your way and sends nerve impulses to your various limbs, mobilizing and subtly flexing their tendons and muscles for attack mode. That hooligan will never know what hit him and the few splashes of diarrhea that spatter his pants will offer few clues. Of course it's all fine and good to visualize this outcome but besides brain preparedness you will also need to learn my fighting techniques. Much has been made of the martial arts of the East but sometimes even they fall short on the mean streets of North American cities where horribly depraved thugs demand a different, more gritty style of fighting in which all of the body's forces and fluids are called into play. Let's look at the example below.

Many thanks to Gerta Plonken and Bernard Kugleman for this crime re-enactment. As you can see, besides using my patented backwards arm-thrust while hooking one leg behind the amateur apiarist attacker's own Florsheim-shod foot, the real key to this defense move is Gerta's ability to stare straight ahead, a slight grimace on her face as if she were on a vacation with her husband, say to some romantic Mediterranean location or a magnificent sweeping landscape somewhere in central Saskatchewan and her husband, let's call him Morris, is making her pose for a photo which she really doesn't want to take even though he's begging her, cajoling her, whining almost so as to have a nice photo to show their friends and neighbours and though she's not buying it Gerta reluctantly strikes a pose if only to shut him up and set off to find a gift shop. Her eyes are slightly squinted against an imaginary sun glinting on a wine-dark sea or shimmering off waving stalks of endless wheat, creating a fearsome facial expression that only adds insult to injury when you're farting on this assailant's face after he hits the ground while simultaneously punching him in the scrotum while reciting Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade in the voice of Peter Lorre (thanks to your well-trained cerebral switchboard operator that has taught you to multitask, even in the most dire situations).

In this series of images, expecting the unexpected and making your mind and body a finely honed reflexive and defensive instrument capable of inflicting immeasurable pain is illustrated in all its profundity. Here a debauched beekeeper in a homemade beekeeping outfit attacks this lovely young woman waiting at a bus stop. Like many deviants he is attracted to her bazoombas and her striking and form-fitting plaid slacks not to mention her general air of innocence. "Oh, when will the #6 bus to Centertown arrive?" she's wondering to herself, seemingly unaware of the demented apiarist creeping up behind her. One cannot even imagine what depraved and vile suggestions he is whispering into her ear as he grasps her ample bosom, his black elasticized socks already causing sweat rings to form around his ankles with the anticipation of the disgusting acts he is soon to carry out upon her voluptuous body as he rubs himself against her enticing polyester and cotton fiber blends. That he wears only shorts beneath his homemade beekeeping robe, a robe ingeniously crafted from an old tarpaulin such as one would use to cover a barbeque or the stacked shingles for a long-overdue roofing project, is a clear indication of the depths of this man's depravity. It's just less fabric that stands between you and his throbbing stinger. Can this situation truly occur, you're asking yourself as you gaze at the evidence presented to you? Well, have no fear or maybe I should say have plenty of fear because this exact incident happened to my landlady not long ago. It's a fact that crazed apiarists scour the city looking for their queen bee, so to speak, to mate with and thus, in their twisted minds, carry on the legacy of the hive. No kung-fu, judo, taekwon-do or karate course could possibly prepare you for this horrifying scenario but it happens dozens of times a day in neighbourhoods just like yours. This situation calls for the Haltiwanger self-defense move #62 (as described above), but if you really want to finish this piece of scum off once he's fallen to the ground, it's best to then sit on his face and break wind (remember, your backwards momentum is already sending you in this direction anyway and so this finishing touch is as natural as brushing one's teeth, combing your grandfather's toupee or breastfeeding a wallaby). If it's an amateur apiarist you're doing battle with, try to direct the passing of your gas through the small opening of his makeshift paper-bag beekeeper's hood for maximum effect. Remember, when breaking wind gas will pass more effectively through plaid pants than solid coloured fabrics due to the airier weave so wear plaid whenever possible to maximize your anal emissions (the Scottish have known this for centuries and utilized plaid's gas-passing efficiency and eventually they just gave up on the whole pants idea and created kilts so that nothing stood between fart and foe, a little known fact that played a large part in stopping the Roman armies from conquering Scotland when they hit Hadrian's Wall). For best gas passing results, not to mention foods to keep you in tip-top training mode, I recommend broccoli and sardines. Everyone raves about beans but although they do add power to the burst they lack the odour to really keep a thug on the ground.

The gas-passing posture pictured here, as demonstrated by Lyle Blemwolf of the Institute for Intestinal Integrity, is almost perfect but plaid pants would make this rear-end attack all the more effective and deadly.

Now, the above example, although unusual, is nowhere out of the ordinary in most North American urban and suburban settings. As is the next scenario pictured below, showing how even a formidable fighting technique like taekwon-do is absolutely useless against a foe who corners you on a tennis court, although this image would try to convince you otherwise. See if you can spot the mistakes and how this attacker will soon get the upper hand on this poor girl, even if she is showing her underpants to distract her assailant. It might work on the tennis pro but not on a seasoned criminal. Once you give up trying to find the faults, which you will because, unlike me, you probably couldn't sense an attacker coming if he had a rotting fish and a satellite dish strapped to his head, I'll explain how this taekwon-do is almost as useless as throwing jello at a charging rhino when it comes to stopping a ski-mask wearing maniac during a morning tennis match when the morning sun casts long shadows and the starlings are pecking each others eyes out over scraps of sweet'n'sour pork and French fries behind Wing's Lucky Buddha restaurant, specializing in Chinese and Canadian cuisine since 1985.    

  SPOT THE MISTAKES!

 GIVE UP YET? OF COURSE YOU HAVE. I KNEW YOU WOULD.

What's wrong with this picture? Number one, anyone attacking on a tennis court would of course be wearing a white ski-mask and outfit so as to blend in with the other players. No use letting them know you're coming from fifty yards away. Number two, why would the woman being attacked not hit the intruder with her tennis racket instead of her foot unless she simply wants to show off her underpants, which only incites the fiend's lusty urges and gives him additional strength. 

As mentioned in the caption to the above image, no self-respecting fiend would dare attack someone on a tennis court wearing all black. White is the way to go, from ski mask to ninja pants, except after Labor Day by which time the pickings are pretty slim on the tennis courts anyway due to the colder weather so most tennis court attacks (and there are plenty) are carried out during the summer months. The above image seems to show taekwon-do as some sort of easy solution to a very complicated problem but the fact is the adversary's ski mask is no doubt hiding the fact that he has poison darts made from the secretions of vibrantly coloured tree frogs concealed in his mouth that he can spit with all the nonchalance and speed of a watermelon seed which can then lodge in an exposed thigh, eye or nasal cavity, thus making all your high falutin' leg kicking just so much hot air waving around on an already stifling hot tennis court. This leg kick might look good if you're a Rockette but absolutely useless against a tree-frog poison dart spitting deviant. The tennis racket however, is equally adept at clubbing the attacker and deflecting the poisonous tree frog darts which cannot pass through the stringing. In fact, using my Haltiwanger self-defense move #47, the racket, through my special Wang-Chung wrist twitch that simulates either an air guitar being played on the upstroke or the masturbatory movements of a Borneo adult male orangutan in his declining years when not even a burgeoning banana tree can please him, can actually reverse the trajectory of the poisonous darts and send them ricocheting back into the assailant's flesh, rendering them unconscious and eventually, if the tree frog poison does it work, dead. So you can see how this taekwon-do can be misleading, making one believe that a simple kick, maybe a mistimed punch to the groin, a face that's supposed to say you mean business but really just makes you look constipated and a flash of underpants, can stop a villain in their tracks but really, when you're picking poison tree frog darts out of your forehead, eyeballs and buttocks, don't forget that I told you so.

A quick note of caution here. If you or someone you know has been hit by a poison tree frog dart, immediate action is required. Call the tree frog poison hot line and they will dispatch a trained tree frog poison expert in an impressive hazmat suit who will promptly administer the antidote with an injection to the buttocks. If you find being injected in the buttocks embarrassing, the only other option is having the poison sucked directly from your penis hole. If this too bothers you, prepare to die.

Another seemingly unusual situation that is much more common than you think is the villainous attack on the head librarian in the children's section of your local library (as pictured below). Many normal law-abiding citizens suddenly turn to a life of crime when they realize they've accumulated so many library fines that they're unable to pay. Some turn to robbery, some try to sell their bodies to raise the necessary funds and some just go crazy with rage and head to their nearest library branch to mete out their own twisted brand of justice. Or maybe they've just been banned from the library for peeing or masturbating in the stacks but either way, they're a formidable foe to tangle with. Here are a couple of Haltiwanger self-defense suggestions in case you should find yourself in the midst of one of these deadly confrontations and need to come to the aid of the portly and gentle librarian who is in over his or her bulbous head, or for that matter, if you yourself are a librarian, portly or not, just follow these simple instructions for lethal results.

It's not hard to tell who the villain is in this photo. Dressed all in black, this verminous library scofflaw is under the impression he can make mincemeat out of the pudgy and toupee-sporting librarian, but looks can be deceiving and this dumpy four-eyed bookworm is about to show Mr. Bad that messing with book learning can be a deadly experience. Most of these library lowlifes attack in the children's section because of the more open space in which to try out their various sweeping kicks and punches. Obviously they never anticipated meeting Elmer the Safety Elephant in rolled-up poster form nor did they expect a diarrhea defense or an oven-mitted testicle grip from a guy who looks like he lost his virginity to a sock-puppet he dressed up to look like Virginia Woolf.

1. Grab an Elmer the Safety Elephant poster off the wall and roll it quickly into a tight funnel shape. "I have had great success with this poster theme," states Skeezus Malchingo, head librarian at the Poison Oak Ridge library. "Thugs really seem to recoil from Elmer's knowing smile and his mighty trunk that can hold a traffic cone up in the air with nary an effort and once you roll the poster up they're really intimidated." But any poster will do as long as it's no smaller than 16"x20" and doesn't featuring cartoon snails wearing bifocals and running shoes.
2. Begin grunting while loosening your tie or rolling down your pantyhose. This will let the interloper know you are ready for trouble by making animal noises and adjusting your restrictive clothing, warning them that fists of fury and feet of fungus are soon to follow. If you don't happen to suffer from foot fungus you can simply tape a mushroom to your forehead (fortunately the library is full of various adhesive materials for this), so that the criminal knows that there will be some form of a fungal element to deal with and answer to. Just as kung-fu practitioners never go into battle without nunchucks and throwing stars, so should you add mushrooms and efficient gas-passing plaid pants to your list of essential Haltiwanger defense weaponry.
3. Brandish the rolled up poster in a threatening manner while mumbling the names of characters from Jacqueline Susann novels. The mumbling is quite important here in that curiosity will get the better of the attacker, causing them to lean forward to hear what you are saying, thus letting their guard down whereupon you can smack them soundly with the poster. I've chosen Jacqueline Susann for this scenario because what depraved soul isn't attracted to Valley of the Dolls or The Love Machine. The combination of Elmer the Safety Elephant and Jacqueline Susann at the same time has proven to be a winning combination for self defense success.
4. The attacker, after this, should be on the defensive, which is your time to strike with even sounder blows than those inflicted with the rolled-up poster. This is also the time, should you be fortunate enough to be suffering from both nerves and an unsettled stomach, to let the diarrhea flow, letting it run down your pant legs and having it pool on the floor around you until it forms something akin to a moat or pond depending on your output. You can add some urine if you wish. Few would dare to cross it, thus increasing your advantage and from this vantage point, you can do considerable damage whether you choose to use the "gesticulating flipper-slap hands of death," or something I like to call the "garlic press," which is what the name implies but think testicles instead of garlic and the press is simulated with your hands encased in novelty oven mitts. Personally I like the ones made to look like lobster claws but many of my students have had equal success with mitts resembling cats, sharks and even moose. You know the old saying, "strike while the iron is hot." Well I like to say "strike while the diarrhea is hot," if the fiend doesn't flee first of course. You'll be saving not only yourself and the librarian, but also the countless children and adults who enjoy the sanctity of the book borrowing system and its welcoming and stimulating environment. And the only price is a little carpet cleaning in the children's section of the library, a place that is no stranger to poop or pee in the first place. Except this poop and pee just saved the library a whole lot of trouble and heartache.

Cute doesn't count for much when you're a criminal sprawled on the floor being beaten by a librarian brandishing a rolled-up poster of Elmer the Safety Elephant. Don't be fooled by this smiling face and frolicsome trunk which can whack the bejeezus out of any ne'er do well in seconds flat. Here's a safety tip for all you criminals out there. Don't fuck with Elmer the Safety Elephant. Enough said.

Here's another scenario that occurs more often than you'd care to imagine. Some human skeleton who's had too much sand kicked in his face at the beach and wants to be a tough guy overnight, heads to his local dollar store and buys a kid's toy cowboy gun and hat. He's not fooling anyone, or at least anybody trained in the Haltiwanger method of self-defense although those not so-trained may cower before his cap gun and tiny flat-top cardboard Stetson. Even if it does make him look like a pencil with a well-used eraser on top (I don't mean to sound disdainful for this man was once me but thanks to my Haltiwanger soon-to-be-patented Muscle-Toning and Bodybuilding System that I will reveal in a later post, I went from a scrawny little shrimp that would barely be enough of an appetizer for a hungry albatross to a virile beanpole with an ass-kicking, harem-grooming mustache, in just six weeks). Nevertheless, this kind of dime-store cowboy attack is carried out many times a day on main streets everywhere in Anytown, USA, robbing old-age pensioners of their social security checks and prescription drug medicines and kids and teens are being taken for their Starbucks money, shiny Nikes and commemorative Chuck "The Rifleman" Connors shower caps. These saddle-less scourges of the city are giving westerns a bad name and the chips on their shoulder are bigger than their heads, meatball casseroles or plastic six-shooters for that matter. But don't be mislead by their diminutive demeanor and physical presence for many of them are capable of both peeing and spitting on you (after they've exhausted their cap pistols of course) with uranium-enriched urine and saliva saturated with toxins from the over-consumption of Maraschino cherries on the many banana splits that they consume daily for keeping up the energy they require to feed their insatiable appetites for irrational and misdirected anger. As for the uranium, they suck it out of the shag carpeting in rec-rooms of retired nuclear scientists' homes that they break in to. So, even in their rinky-dink outfits they are still a force to be reckoned with and the image below, as demonstrated by one of my star pupils, Claxton Menudo, illustrates the proper battle stance and approach, hands at the ready to parry any toxic saliva or radioactive urine not to mention the right hand prepared, if need be, for a good nose pull (which will be discussed more thoroughly in the next segment). Notice also the right leg is cocked and ready, not unlike the hammer on a cap-gun six-shooter, to flick out suddenly and disarm the interloper while the left hand is free to grab the bolo tie, pulling the attacker's face close enough to say, "Hey, nice hat but what's wrong with wearing a ten-gallon instead? Unless you're afraid it'll snap your cocktail-sausage of a neck." Honestly, pulling a cow's teat couldn't be any easier.

Here is my best pupil, Claxton Menudo, demonstrating how to take on one of these toy gun wielding urban cowboy beanpoles who in the old days wouldn't have made a strong enough spoke for the wheel of a stagecoach. Claxton favours the ninja-style black pajama outfit rather than plaid pants but he's a pro and if he showed up to the OK Corral in a tulle tutu, chiffon scarf and a pork pie hat only a fool would dare to comment. All I can say, looking at this picture, is that this sagebrush beanpole is in for a rough ride.

As I've mentioned above, the nose pull is a very effective deterrent when engaging in a serious confrontation. Its success relies entirely on the element of surprise and if you are a portly person (much like the librarian mentioned previously), this may be your only recourse in a brewing fight. The key here is to look your opponent in the eye, never wavering or blinking and then begin to babble in ancient Assyrian. If you don't know ancient Assyrian just make something up like "Gazoonga februm moochka bunga pishvabibble," or something to that effect. No one will ever know the difference. As your attacker is puzzling over this quickly reach up and grasp his nose. Presto! Fight's over before its even begun. Tears of pain will flow down his grubby cheeks. If you want to add insult to injury and they don't put up too much of a fuss, lead your attacker by the nose through the town square or city streets yelling for all to hear, "This is what happens to the scum that eats my porridge." Either way your foe will want to shake your hand afterwards in awe of your formidable fighting talents and knowledge of ancient and forgotten languages.

Here, brothers Sid and Murray Milcroft, demonstrate the nose pull and follow-up handshake. Being that they're both portly gentlemen (it runs in their family), the nose pull is the ideal counter-attack for these two, especially because their work in the fish bait industry leads them to deal with some very unsavory types who are prone to violence when, for example, their shipment of earthworms is late.

The fact is the Haltiwanger Method of Self-Defense is a fool-proof system for protecting yourself from the shady elements that have grown all too common in this world these days, lurking in alleyways, next to Slushy machines or popping out of shrubbery lining the railway tracks. For example, a seedy looking beady-eyed tramp (like the one pictured below from a police sketch) accosts you, using his desire for a hot bowl of soup as an excuse to stand in your way. Well, one look at his painted face and devious eyes lets you know that soup isn't the only thing on his mind. Especially when you can feel his grizzly beard right up against your face. That's too close for any hobo unless you're a hobo wife. Here you could try the nose pull but there's a good chance his red prosthetic nose will come off in your hand so I suggest striking him with an old jockstrap you've carefully concealed in your sleeve while simultaneously barking the passenger manifest for the Lusitania. The only soup this beady-eyed tramp will see is whatever bowl of sludge they're serving in jail that evening.

This police sketch was instrumental is apprehending Muk-Muk Primpsmire, whose gaily painted face was a baffling contrast to his dark personality and nefarious activities. He bilked so many people out of so much money it was rumoured he owned the homeless shelter in which he lived. He met his end at a prison rodeo where he was one of the clowns in a barrel during the bull-riding competition. He was gored so many times they named a new rodeo event after him called the Muk-Muk Gore'n'Toss.

How about this. A couple of punks reeking of liquor try to whack you and your friends with mallets while you're innocently making your way to a doily-making competition. Using two of my tried and true Haltiwanger moves, even the ladies can get in on the fun and the action. As illustrated below, Yerta and Volga are demonstrating the "Bad doggie, now I'm going to rub your nose in the poo-poo you left on the broadloom," and the "Broken wheelbarrow by the side of the barn where Old Man Gunther up and died last July." The picture is self-explanatory. All you need is a few karate chops, a mule kick, a little imagination and some good elasticized socks to really pull this off.

Yerta guides her "bad doggie" towards the imaginary excrement for a good nose-rubbing while Volga rolls the "broken wheelbarrow" into the barn for the rats to nest in.

Speaking of punks, how often has a wild teenager tried to club you on the head? Pretty often I'd think. With skyrocketing juvenile delinquency rates, you can rest assured a wild teenager is clubbing someone over the head every fifteen minutes or so somewhere on this continent, day and night. During spring break topless co-eds roam the streets clubbing innocent citizens with anything from cricket bats to Sears catalogs, mannequin legs to frozen ham steaks. Although there are some who enjoy this activity and would actually pay good money to a topless co-ed to be whacked repeatedly with frozen meat or mannequin parts, the general consensus by society is this is not behaviour to be condoned or encouraged. If you are to encounter one of these roving bands of crazed teenagers, be they male or female and undoubtedly hopped up on benzedrine and extra-old sharp American cheese, teach them the lesson they should have learned at their daddy's knee with two of my most extreme techniques. Move #48 asks that firstly, you must stand firm against their ruffian ways and when you've got their attention through what I call the "Knuckles of Toughness" stare-down in which you make your eyes resemble knuckles attached to the "iron fists of death" (you need not have tough knuckles but only insinuate that your knuckles are tough in which case a bit of knuckle hair helps and if you don't have that consider some knuckle toupees and as for the "iron fists of death," more about them in Part 2 of Haltiwanger's Method of Self-Defense), insult their lapels before delivering a chopping blow to their Adam's Apple and if you can't find that then throw an apple at their neck. This will surprise them at which point you can throw them off balance with a swift ingrown toenail kick while simultaneously striking the nerve centers in their armpit with what I call the "chicken head wrist," where you make your wrist look like a dumb chicken scratching for seeds in the dirt but the real dummy will be your attacker when they feel the searing pain from your "hand-beak." Some people like to gussy up this move by attaching a fake wattle to their forearm or wrist, easily done with an old beige sock and some adhesive tape. It will have your assailant wanting to lick their wounds if only they could get their tongue to stretch that far under their armpit. The chicken head wrist will swiftly turn any attacker into a turkey; beheaded, plucked, cooked and served up for a wholesome family dinner.  Move #73 is called the "Clutch of Satan's Brother-in-Law, Ed Minchler." All you need to do is convince your assailant you want to dance with them and once you've won their trust, begin dancing and then suddenly throw them over your shoulder when they go to kiss you. Or bite you. Or whatever they're trying to do with their disgusting mouths. It works best when combined with the "Knuckles of Toughness." Just remember to repeat, inside your head of course, "knuckles of toughness don't let me down, knuckles of toughness don't let me down, make them frown, O knuckles of toughness, they will drown in the blood of Mitzi Gaynor and Satan's brother-in-law, Ed Minchler." Why Mitzi Gaynor you wonder? Well, some things are best left a mystery. All I can say is just trust me and the blood of Mitzi Gaynor will work in your favour. If you have any doubts just ask Mitzi's co-star in South Pacific, Rossano Brazzi. Except he's dead. I rest my case.

In the foreground, Yerta strikes with a variation on the "chicken head wrist" called the "regurgitating chicken head," where her hand resembles a chicken vomiting on a forlorn bank of the Assiniboine River, very close to the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, just after wheat harvesting season. Via the nerve centers in the armpit where the "regurgitating chicken head wrist" blow is struck, this attacker is quickly incapacitated and pretty much on his way to his own funeral. With two ingrown toenails used in her sliding kick, Yerta is essentially an angel of death at this moment. Notice her eyes. If she didn't blink you'd think she had knuckles inside her head. Knuckles of toughness that is. As for Volga, she's about to deliver this thug back to hell where Satan gleefully awaits him. All he has to remember to say is that Ed Minchler sent him. Care of Volga of course. Maybe that way he'll get off easy and just pull septic tank duty instead of being flayed alive for the Deceased Despots' fundraiser picnic and Pol Pot Celebrity Roast.

Before we move on to Part 2 of my extensive self-defense method, I just want to reiterate the cerebral part of the training and how, in fact, you can vanquish any enemy using only the power of your mind. That's right. Not even an eye blink, lick of the lips or twitch of a limb comes into play when you can harness the hidden power of your "switchboard operator" who lives inside your head (as discussed at the start of this post and I hope by now you've given that "operator" a name and attired them in some smart but casual and loose-fitting clothing for the long hours they put in sitting inside the cramped space of your brain with only old liverwurst sandwiches and flat soda pop for sustenance and energy while ensuring that all the right connections are made). As shown in the illustration below, I have taken some of the ancient meditation techniques along with elements of hypnotic states to create the Haltiwanger Animal Husbandry Deterrent Effect. Through intense concentration and inner mind visualization, anyone can conjure up a farmyard animal that will stand in the path between you and your attacker. Imagine their surprise as they reach for your throat only to find a large bovine blocking their way. Or a gruff goat. Or a frothy-mouthed steed. Or a fatted pig. Even a gaggle of geese. How is this possible, you ask? Read on and I will teach you my secret tricks for creating a stereopticon image using your eyeballs as the transmitting lenses and your brain as the conjurer of this highly-realistic barnyard beast.

In this image a man, known as something of a milquetoast in his community, practices some bovine conjuring. The projection is so realistic that if there were a farmer or Swiss national in the room, they would definitely attempt to milk this apparition. How disappointed they would be when, as they went to grasp a teat, they instead found themselves on the receiving end of a swift kick to the face. 

First, you must put yourself in a deep meditative state and you must do it quickly because an attacking hooligan won't wait. To hasten this process you must hypnotize yourself first before you even leave your house or rooming-house or the cardboard box under the bridge that you call home. It's easier than you think but you will need the head of a ventriloquist's dummy. No body is needed so you should be able to save a little money when you make your purchase from the dummy supply shop. This dummy head will be your primary tool for self-hypnosis along with a little mantra that I call a Wangerism, which you'll need to repeat to yourself until the hypnosis process is complete. You will also need to speak in the voice of the dummy head in a kind of light, bantering dialogue with yourself to keep your subconscious burbling at the brain's surface but not completely overtaking your general awareness of the world around you so that you can still walk around, obey stoplights, fold a stranger's laundry or order a hamburger without onions. I've named my dummy head Glimpy Hydrate and I never leave my room without talking to him first. So, begin by staring into your dummy's eyes. Lose yourself in their deep pools of esoteric knowledge. If anyone can convert a traveling salesman's joke into a Zen koan, the dummy can do it. Soon those eyes will become pools of nothingness as you enter a deep meditative, almost trance-like state. Then, to really hammer the last nail into the coffin in this level of consciousness repeat my Wangerism mantra. You can use slight variations but do not stray too far from these words or you might never find release from the dummy's magnetic forces.

"I am not Casper Milquetoast nor am I Casper the Friendly Ghost. I fear no man or giant with my powers shrouded in secrecy. Tears of pain will rain down upon my enemies and I am one tough hombre that makes self-defense look easy, my hands packed with the power of TNT. Forget your hoi polloi, I'm no squeaky dog toy but you'll be squeaking for deliverance from your misery once my fists of fury pummel you until so much artichoke dip. I am a dynamic muscle that will play peek-a-boo with your bowels and turn your Adam's Apple into applesauce. Send your dry-cleaning to Melvin Goldstein. Tell him Glimpy sent you. He'll know what you mean and he can get the bloodstains out of most everything. Don't forget to rehydrate. Ha, ha, catch my drift. Thank-you and goodnight."

Once you've repeated this a few times and stared deeply into your dummy's eyes you should be beginning your entry into a partial hypnotic state. It's now time to converse with the dummy to complete the process. Here's a sample dialogue. Feel free to improvise when working with your own dummy head.

Glimpy: I went to see my psychiatrist today.
Me: Really, I didn't know you were seeing a shrink.
Glimpy: Yes, he said I have some real issues.
Me: Tissues?
Glimpy: I said issues, not tissues, you dummy. Why don't you try talking with your mouth open for a change. And on the subject of tissues, you better stop masturbating before you put the Kleenex factory out of business.
Me: Hey, if you had a body instead of being just a blabbering head, maybe you'd understand my position.
Glimpy: I don't think anybody could understand your position. In fact, isn't that how you lost your first wife?
Me: Don't push your luck or you just might find yourself face down in a dumpster.
Glimpy: Well, at least I'd get a decent meal for a change.
Me: Forget that. What did the psychiatrist say?
Glimpy: He recommended I double my martini intake.
Me: Don't you think that might be too much too drink?
Glimpy: Hey, I have to look at your ugly mug everyday. Maybe I should triple my intake?
Me: Where would you put it? You have no stomach.
Glimpy: I have to stomach you, don't I. Anyway, I like the booze to go straight to my head and when you're all head, where else is it gonna go?
Me: Say, who is this psychiatrist anyway?
Glimpy: Doc Pussel.
Me: He's no psychiatrist. He's the bartender down the street.
Glimpy: Yeah, but he makes a drink called the "Shrink" that'll have you confessing everything. Including that goat you married in Las Vegas last week.
Me: That was no goat, that was my wife.
Glimpy: Don't play dumb with a dummy. I can hear the bleating all the way from the basement when you two have sex. It's like someone's dragging a string of tin cans through the alleyway.
Me: Ah, go soak your head.
Glimpy: Don't mind if I do. In a shot glass preferably. In fact, you better make it a double.
Applause. Lights dim. Some midgets come out and chase monkeys on bicycles around the stage. Fruit salad for everyone.

My best friend and confidante, Glimpy Hydrate, sharing a laugh before I set out to kick some hooligan ass.

Now that you've achieved a semi-hypnotic state, it's a piece of cake for you to visualize in your mind a farm animal of your choice. Once its image is set in your brain, push the creature, shove it, slap it on the behind if you have to to get it moving to the front of your head where you can then push it out of your eyes. Presto! Where once there was empty space there is now a domesticated animal standing between you and your assailant. The image is temporary though so be warned that you must move quickly after this whether you're utilizing the "regurgitating chicken head wrist," the "gesticulating flipper slap-hands of death," the "babbling Assyrian," the "knuckles of toughness" the always effective "diarrhea moat" or the "Clutch of Satan's Brother-in-Law, Ed Minchler." Whatever move you choose to use, rest assured you'll earn the respect from any wisenheimer who dares to cross you. Now, with what I've just described you should be ready to defend yourself in any situation but stay tuned for Part 2 of my self-defense method where I will outline some of my more esoteric and unique moves that will help defend against different types of weapons and also crazed guinea pigs (more on this later). And remember, be prepared and always aware for danger lurks everywhere and evil waits for no one except maybe at the hot dog cart if there's a big lineup and the evildoer is really, really hungry.

They may look innocent to you but these wieners are natural magnets for attracting evildoers from anywhere in the city. By noon there will be a whole lot of evil going down around this hot dog cart. You've been warned.

Reviews Of Books I Have Read

There's A Chance Rosenblatz and Goldenberg Might Be Dead

Though I don't turn my nose up at the thespian arts (unless I have a nosebleed of course), reading plays has never been my cup of tea or coffee or even a nice, soothing mug of beef bouillon, especially after my landlady has locked me out of the rooming house on a cold winter day because she thinks I've been peeing all over the toilet seat. Plus a play, in print form, is usually very meager in the page department and thus not very good for crushing silverfish unless you get a good flex to your downswing, in which case sometimes the damage is even greater and more satisfying than say, from an encyclopedia volume or large print edition of War And Peace. Waiting For Godot? I think not. More like Waiting For Silverfish. But that's neither here nor there because in the end the play's the thing and if anyone has broken a leg on the theatrical stage it's my good friend and brother-in-law, Schmeltzy Gimmeldick, philosopher and owner of Gimmeldick's Hardwood Flooring Outlet. Well, he can now add dramatist to his well-rounded resume after the play he's so recently penned is ready to be put through its paces and whose pages he rushed right over to me, the paper still warm from his inkjet printer. A freshly born and swaddled baby couldn't have been more comforting, inspiring or better smelling.

The playwright, philosopher and hardwood flooring expert extraordinaire, not to mention my brother-in-law, Schmeltzy Gimmeldick. Here he can be seen preparing for a role in his very own play using his patented "Gimmeldick" method acting exercises that make Stanislavsky look like a Sunday walk in the park holding a hot fudge sundae between your buttocks while an escaped Boston terrier that has recently undergone brain surgery bites your legs and urinates on your flip-flops.

Schmeltzy and I go way back because he married my sister who won't talk to me but that hasn't stopped Schmeltzy from keeping me leashed to the family tree which includes visiting me from time to time to bring me frozen TV dinners and cans of chili and beans and spotting me a few bucks occasionally because I know he fooled around on my sister with his secretary, Mitzi, whose no looker (being wall-eyed and having legs like the balustrades on a decaying staircase) but neither is Schmeltzy unless you like copious amounts of back hair. Oddly, the rest of his body is as bare as a baby's bottom but his back is tufted like a silver back gorilla. Anyway, that's water under the bridge or off a duck's back or wherever that water goes.

Lest you think Schmeltzy is a neophyte in the dramatic arts, people should know he comes from a long and esteemed theatrical lineage. His mother, Verna, pictured above, was a popular ventriloquist in her day with her dummy sidekick, Milton. As adept at throwing her voice as she was with flower arrangement, the highlight of her act came when she would breastfeed her dummy. "Does little Miltie need some of mama's milk?" she would coo and Milton would roll his eyes and clack his jaw and stammer out a "Yes, mother," while the crowd would go crazy, turning over their seats in their haste to get a better view and eventually the police would arrive and close down the gymnasium and then Schmeltzy's dad, Boris, would have to bail her out of jail but not before she finished her show for the boys down in the 23rd precinct and got a few phone numbers to perform at private birthday parties. If that's not a showbiz trooper and show stopper I don't know what is. On a side note of interest, Milton survives to this day and works as a salesman at Schmeltzy's hardwood flooring outlet.

So with a proffered twenty smackers paper-clipped to his manuscript along with a stack of Swanson Hungry Man dinners in a shopping bag that he placed at my feet, I was all eyes and ears to see and hear where his dramatic urges had taken him. Little did I realize at the time that it was old Shakespeare himself whose door Schmeltzy would be knocking at and then banging on, belligerently I might add, when Shakespeare didn't answer, although I mean that figuratively of course. In reality it was actually Schmeltzy banging at my rooming house door but my sleep was deep, due to a previous night's combination of NyQuil and instant chicken soup (not that I'm sick-it's just a recipe I'm currently working on), and so it wasn't until he started bellowing my nickname, Fuckface as he so fondly calls me, through the cheap veneer door paneling, that I awoke from my slumber, my eyes lightly crusted with the downy dew of my dreams and overactive mucous membranes. And so there we sat, two worldly men of words and weltschmerz (not to be confused with the welts that Ethel inflicted upon Fred Mertz and known as weltsmertzes), as I probed Schmeltzy about his recent foray into the world of stagecraft.
"Shakespeare was a jackass," Schmeltzy informed me, pushing my pile of word searches off the bed  to make room to sit down (I find that word searches sharpen my mind and keep me honed and better prepared to detect the subtler nuances in the great literary works that I rarely, if ever, read). "I mean I read this Hamlet shit back in high school and his two best characters, those Rosenblatz and Goldenberg guys are just wasted, playing second fiddles to all those other boring jackasses. I know 'cause I Googled it and what I saw didn't make me too happy. So I decided to remedy that situation. I mean if I were Shakespeare and knew which side my bread was buttered on, I would've made these two guys front row and centre but I guess that's why I'm a hardwood flooring king and he's just some old dead guy with a fancy collar who couldn't get no royal pussy and died of syphilis in an outhouse on the outskirts of Salisbury. And then this Tom...Tom...I don't even know his fucking last name but I think it's that guy who hosts America's Funniest Home Videos and that shit-ass Dancing With The Stars show, he decides to write a play focusing on these two schmoes but he gets it all wrong making them all funny and cute instead of being the backstabbing son-of-a-bitches that would fuck your sister behind your back and then make you sniff their fingers fresh from your sister's ass though you don't know that's where they've been before going off to maybe kill your cat or salamander or whatever the fuck kind of pet you have or love to death. I mean, I wouldn't hire that guy to sell hardwood flooring to overweight bingo-callers strapped to mall scooters in Sudbury, let alone write a play that people might like and recommend to their friends and family not to mention getting a little goddamn historical accuracy because that kind'a shit matters if you wanna be a playwright. Am I right? Eh? Am I right or not? Oh yeah, and he covers up the fact they're Jews. Both him and Shakespeare, coupl'a anti-Semites goosestepping their way through some crappy barbaric finger-sniffing sister-banging century if you ask me."

Schmeltzy's mother actually was a bingo-caller and also confined to a mall-scooter, so he didn't just toss that phrase out there without a touch of authenticity. Known for her vivacious and bubbly personality when she wasn't drinking and her ability to run over and sometimes crush people's toes with her scooter when she was, Zora was in high demand from Napanee to Winnipeg to Moosonee. She brought a level of professionalism and expertise to the bingo-calling profession that many said hadn't been seen since Floyd Dudendum had passed away, on the job I might add, calling B-23 just as a huge cerebral hemorrhage brought him to his knees and then eventually onto the industrial carpeting, the last flickers of his breath softly rustling a losing cardboard pull-tab flap that had been discarded close to where his face came to rest. Here's a rare photo of Zora before a game. She liked to arrive early and just meditate and get a feel for the space to help her prepare for a frenzied night of bingo-calling. It's this same focus and concentration that Schmeltzy brings to the stage (he did a wonderful one-man Pirates of Penzance in the hardwood-flooring warehouse one lunch break that brought all the shippers and receivers to their feet calling for an encore and another twelve-pack of beer), and is sure to make his play a success once he finds some actors at the detox centre or homeless shelter because, as Schmeltzy says, "those are the people from the school of hard knocks who have the theatrical chops and deep sense of character that you can't get from any Russkie method-acting school where everyone's pants smell like vodka and pickled herring farts plus these homeless alcoholics really bring a role to life not to mention they work for peanuts, literally, as long as you throw in a couple of bottles of barrel wash."

"I couldn't agree with you more, Schmeltzy," I said, eying the stack of Hungry Man frozen dinners.
I didn't want to tell Schmeltzy that he had the wrong Tom and that I believed he meant Tom Stoppard, a British playwright whose works I'm well not acquainted with but who did host a TV game show on the BBC called Name That Meat Pie in which contestants had to name the meat filling of various pies for cash prizes and/or dental work. Of course that was well before he made it big with his absurdist plays and his Tom Stoppard fashion line of men's hosiery and undergarments (the play-writing business unfortunately doesn't pay big money so Mr. Stoppard, instead of putting all his eggs in one basket, put some into cheap knock-off socks and underwear that he has manufactured in sweatshops and then ships over to London where he jacks the price and puts his logo-TS-on the packaging and when people ask him what TS stands for he smirks and says, "tits and socks," which leaves people bewildered but gets them talking and buying his product and every year, in conjunction with the London Royal Repertory Theatre's Production of Shakespeare's Frights, Fights & Delights, a review of Shakespeare's greatest hits from his best plays set to music and with laser lights, Stoppard puts on his own variety show he calls Stoppard's Cock-Of-The-Walk Cavalcade Of Tits & Socks, which allows him to market both his designer line and his thought-provoking plays so someone's laughing all the way to the bank and it sure as hell isn't Shakespeare even though he's dead so it's a moot point but if he were alive a bank would be the furthest place from where he'd be, especially with Tom Stoppard standing there counting all his moolah, licking his absurdist chapped lips and holding up the line. Either way, Schmeltzy was happy that I was in complete agreement with his Shakespearean theories (I know which side my bread's buttered on and mine comes with a frozen entree), and it was then that Schmeltzy persuaded me to make a run-through reading of his play and I agreed because I'll pretty much do anything for a heat'n'serve Salisbury steak with instant mashed potatoes, peas, carrots and gravy, all beautifully compartmentalized in its own foil serving tray. To me it's like being on an airplane taking off on a soul-searching and adventurous journey without having to leave the comfort of my lumpy bed or feeling homesick for the warmth and comfort afforded by the rooming-house odours of moldy dishtowels, boiled cabbage and mouse feces.

This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as far as I'm concerned and it should be noted, to keep on a theatrical theme, that Salisbury steak was named for the 4th Duke of Salisbury who, in the 15th century repelled the forces of King Richard the III who had teamed up with the thieving and murderous sons-of-a-bitches, Prince Vimrod and Queen Jagenstoffle of Norway who King Richard had fallen in love with and promised her the city of Salisbury as part of his betrothal package deal, but the whole affair ended in tragedy when Prince Vimrod was accidentally impaled by King Richard III's fake unicorn that he had fashioned out of mutton and a narwhal's tusk as a gift for Queen Jagenstoffle to be presented on their wedding day. The Duke of Salisbury vanquished the invading troops, their morale already broken by Vimrod's tragic death and the event was commemorated with the invention of this special dish. The theatrical angle comes into play when one realizes this is where Shakespeare is buried, after contracting a venereal disease at the local brothel and passing away on his chamber-pot, mulling over his penis sores and varicose veins. Unfortunate for the world of literature because at the time he was working on his unfinished play, tentatively titled "Those Murdering Norwegian Sons-of-a-Bitches," about this tragic moment in British history that, alas, never saw the light of day nor the stage.

Now that we have all that background information out of the way it's on to Schmeltzy's play. I took the part of Rosenblatz and Schmeltzy played Goldenberg in our rooming-house read-through and I must say Schmeltzy punched all the theater of the absurd tickets with this magnificent tour de force of existential angst, apathy and the resulting constipation that these two formidable forces wreak upon the body. Something I'm no stranger to when you've consumed a pound of T.V. dinner Salisbury steak. Honestly, it's like Waiting For Godot but with smoked meat. Or Sartre's No Exit but in a deli. Here's a sampling.

Act I. Curtain goes up on a delicatessen setting where two men are sitting at a table. 
Rosenblatz: Why did you order the double meat?
Goldenberg: Are you crazy. I always order the double meat. How many years have we been coming here and you ever see me order anything but the double meat? You got Alzheimers of something?
R: You've ordered the kishka before.
G: I've never ordered the kishka here. You must be thinking of the kasha. One time, what, five years ago, I had an upset stomach so I ordered some kasha. So, sue me. A man orders kasha once, from that day on it's just kasha, kasha, kasha. Do I look like a kasha eater to you? Granted, my grandparents were big kasha eaters back in Russia in the shtetl but they didn't have much else to eat after the Cossacks made off with all their wives and goats and sheep and fire-making tools. But me, hey, I haven't done too bad as a zipper manufacturer. Who wants kasha when you can have pastrami or corned beef or even a smoked tongue sandwich, especially with the kind of money I make.
R: Hey, I make just as money as you with my button factory and you never hear me complaining about having a nice plate of kasha from time to time. Nothing wrong with a little kasha. Once I was over at Hymie's place and he put out a big platter of pickled herring and smoked whitefish but I said, "Hymie, I don't mean to be rude but you wouldn't by any chance maybe have a little kasha to go with this?" Hymie understood. He's a kasha man. Kishka too. Hymie would never turn down a plate of kishka.
G: Kasha, kishka, kasha, kishka, who th'hell cares? I didn't order it, I'm not eating it, I don't wanna talk about it anymore. Now how about this Hamlet guy. This is something we need to discuss. He's been underselling me with his own zippers, cheap zippers, such crap you wouldn't believe. I wouldn't put them on my grand children's pants. He's giving the zipper industry a bad name. I mean people think a zipper is a simple thing. Oh yeah, go ahead and make them cheap. What is it anyway? Just a bunch of little metal teeth with a thingamajig that zips them up, how hard could that be? Well, I'm telling you, my friend, this from a man who has devoted his life to zippers. They're more complicated than nuclear fission, anti-gravity machines, toaster ovens for God's sake. And this, this gonif thinks he can take business away from me. You know what I say? Eh? It's time to murder this son-of-a-bitch. Kill this Danish prick and his family if we have to.
R: (sleepily), Danish? Mmm, what kind? Lemon or poppy seed? I like a nice danish.
G: Not that kind of danish, you putz. This Hamlet guy, he's from Denmark. Anyway, are you up to killing this thieving son-of-a-bitch or do I have to do it myself?
R: Yeah, yeah, what's your hurry. Let me finish my corned beef first. It's not like he's leaving the country. Oy, I think I've got gallstones. Or kidney stones. Can you get stones in your kidneys? I don't even know. Maybe I should go to the doctor. Have you seen my walker? I can't kill anyone if I don't have my walker.
G: You know, maybe you should take it easy. Stay here, have some nice rice pudding, my treat. I'll take care of things (looks offstage to a suggested figure working the deli counter). Hey, Moishe, you busy for the next few hours. I gotta go kill somebody and I could use a little help. Nothing big. Kill a guy, maybe his wife too, he's got a Cadillac, it's yours if you tag along.
(from offstage comes Moishe's voice)
M: Sure, sure, just give me a second. I've gotta get this brisket out of the oven. A Cadillac, eh? What colour?
G: Maroon.
M: Maroon. I love that colour. And it rhymes with macaroon. And raccoon. I love raccoons, especially the way they wash their food. I once saw a raccoon wash a kreplach in a pail of dirty water and cooking oil in the alleyway out back of the deli. It broke my heart. And I still have my old maroon leisure suit hanging in the back of my closet. You wouldn't believe how much pussy a schmekel like me could get with a maroon leisure suit and a pound of pastrami. I'll tell you all about it later after we kill this Nazi Danish son-of-a-bitch and we're driving back in my new Cadillac.
Lights dim. Curtains go down. End of the first act.

If anyone should think Schmeltzy was exaggerating when he had Goldenberg describing the intricate mechanics of zipper technology, look no further than this diagram. Seemingly simple at first, this is actually a formulaic problem that confounded even Einstein on his best days, making him bite through so many pipe stems his wife made him take up cigar smoking, if only to save his teeth. Working against gravity and atomic and molecular entropy, the zipper redefined all our previous preconceptions about the laws of physics. Oh, sure, you could say. It's just teeth, tape, slides and stops but the only person you'd be fooling is yourself. The next time you're zipping up remember the laws of nature are totally against this process. The only thing more unnatural than a zipper is a lobster operating a backhoe to dig out a swimming pool for its children, an event which did occur in a suburb of Toronto until the neighbours wised up and called the police and the lobster was arrested, not only for trespassing as it didn't live on the premises, but also for destroying private property and disturbing the peace since lobsters are nocturnal and it did most of its digging at night.

My only wish is that Schmeltzy lives to see his play performed on the stage or local gymnasium or shipping dock because talent like this shouldn't go to waste. Nor should those Hungry Man dinners he brought me. I've offered to volunteer my time in any way Schmeltzy can use me, from stage director to actor, understudy to set designer because a play like this would stop Stoppard in his tracks and throw Hamlet into an omelette of contemporary thought where thankfully poor Yorick would be buried under such well-laid and beautiful hardwood flooring that no one would dare disturb its highly polished surface just to dig up some old moldy, maggot-ridden jester's skull, let alone make a speech about it. So if this play hits the limelight on Broadway, off-Broadway or in that doughnut shop parking lot off the 401 highway as you come off the Orillia 32B East off-ramp that takes you to the Trillium Star Casino and Clancy's Golf Centre if you continue for another 4 kilometres, I suggest you zip your lips and let the actors do the talking. Schmeltzy turns the theatre of the absurd into so much cheese curd that wouldn't be out of place on a plate of poutine, on the stage or crusting the front of Marlon Brando's underwear back in the day when On The Waterfront meant a pair of cement shoes on the East River and your severed penis jammed into your mouth could easily be mistaken for a cannoli bobbing in the waves, the only witness being Samuel Beckett (or Uncle Sammy as he was known in Hollywood and at Phil's Heating & Duct Cleaning in Milwaukee) and Uncle Sammy wasn't saying anything. In my humble opinion all I can say is that one day this play is sure to become as great as TV dinner Salisbury steak, with or without the apple crisp dessert option.

Reviews of Books I've Never Read

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Here's the Jonathan Franzen Freedom Action Figure doll that came out as part of the novel's novel marketing campaign. The beauty of this doll is that it was loved by both adults and children alike and as kids played with the doll at their parent's slippered feet, gunning down the invisible enemy behind couch legs or wherever they might be, the adults sat comfortably in their wing-back chairs by the roaring fireplace, riveted by Franzen's magnificent words and plot devices and using the Franzen Freedom doll's light-up gun scope to further illuminate the pages and reduce eye-strain.

First off let me say Jonathan Franzen is like eating peanuts. You can't have just one. Or if you don't like peanuts, maybe he's more like potato chips or crispy pork rinds or pretzel sticks. Or any snack food that you enjoy and can't stop eating, even though you know it'll make you sick. You just eat and eat and eat or in this case read and read and read until a mad diarrhea dash to the bathroom is the inevitable outcome.

I'm also impressed by the size of this book. The silverfish literally quake in fear when they see me approaching with this magnificent tome. So many contemporary authors get away publishing these weenie little books, no thicker than a Vienna cocktail sausage, but Franzen really knows how to pile up the word count and stack the pages in the process and I can always count on him to produce a silverfish crushing piece of work that in a pinch could also squish mice, flies, even hairless mole rats if need be. Indeed, it would be a huge disappointment if an author of Franzen's stature and caliber was not up to the task of creating such wonderful vermin exterminating books. But hats off to Franzen for here's an author who never lets his Franzen-ites down and when I'm down on my hands and knees on the bathroom's linoleum tiling, whacking the bejesus out of silverfish armies, I'm always, silently, thanking Franzen for his profundity and prolific output. And if you can get your hands on a large print edition of this book you're pretty much an angel of death as far as silverfish are concerned and they should be concerned when they see you coming waving Freedom in your hand because freedom is just another word for death to all those many-legged vermin who would enslave us with their antennae-waving ways and their uncanny ability to subsist on disgusting skin flakes for days, months, even years on end, which, in my case, due to extreme psoriasis, means an endless free lunch for all those parasites and their friends that they have no hesitation about calling up and inviting over for an all-you-can-eat buffet off my body while I'm happily snoring away. Like the scourge of communism, these creatures threaten our very free-wheeling, fun-loving existence not to mention our many styles of underpants and hoisery options, and I, for one, won't settle for this and if such transgressions were allowed to continue, I would surely roll over in my grave, once I die or course and have a grave to roll over in but in the meantime I will roll over any other person's grave in the cemetery so if you're paying your respects to a dearly departed loved one and see a man rolling about on a grave plot, have no fear for it's just me doing my small part to stop the insidious influx of insects and their communist societies.

An exercise designed to help you train in the event that one day you might have to roll over in your grave. If you don't have access to such a specialized piece of equipment, a simple stepladder, a kitchen chair sawed in half, a loofah sponge, the business end of a scythe and the perch taken from the cage of an obese cockatoo should suffice.

Now, as Dickens had reached his pinnacle with Oliver Twist, Melville with Moby Dick and Mickey Spillane with My Gun Is Quick, you could say that Freedom is the culmination of all of Franzen's finest thoughts and ideas, all congealed like cold oatmeal in a breakfast nook whose smog-smudged windows overlook a gas station where Mr. Renaldo Gillespie will die of a heart attack while pumping gas and passing gas simultaneously because, as some of you may not know, one of the side effects of a heart attack is farting uncontrollably, a sure sign to any innocent bystander that a heart attack is occurring and a tragic event might very well end in death.

Still, with a plot that begins with all the bang of a sick budgie vomiting undigested birdseed on to the newspaper flooring of its cage before falling off its perch and landing on its cuttle-fish sharpened beak, lulling the reader into a sense of banal domestic intrigue, Franzen quickly revs it up, going from 0 to 60 with a double cam and re-blocked V8 and though it's no Maserati this is America and freedom we're talking about, not some whiny European import whose exhaust smells of foie gras, mortadella, burnt berets, one-eyed chicken hoarding gypsies, stolen Greek friezes, rickets, sweaty cricket pants, the Industrial Revolution, Charles Dickens' jockstrap, bad shrimp and old women with mustaches and hairy moles where other people have facial features and/or limbs attached to shopping bags.

Basically, this book is the story of Gubba and Teddy Fenoodee, their teenage son, Ranch, and their twenty-something daughter, Serafina-Bitskin. Add to the picture Teddy's old high school buddy, the tormented conceptual artist, Seymour Parfo, recently moved back to the city after success and then failure in the dog-eat-dog-that-drinks-out-of-the-toilet-bowl world of international art and you have a recipe for disaster, renewal, restraining orders and jello molds complete with luncheon meat and tears of bitterness imbedded deep in their quivering centers. Teddy has never strayed far from his roots, marrying his college sweetheart and making a life for himself and his family in his hometown of Mount Olive, North Carolina, pickle capital of the U.S.A. Working as a chief quality control expert at the local pickle factory, Teddy is a socially and environmentally conscious individual who cares both about Mother Earth and the pickles she provides so selflessly so that others may enjoy the fruits of her loins, labours and the headiness of her brine. Not to beat a metaphor like a dead horse that lost the Kentucky Derby, but the combination of the pickles and Mother Nature's insinuated vagina (which has always been rumored to lie just outside of Mount Olive beneath the overpass leading on to the Interstate I-40) are an obvious subtext to the fecundity of the community and the many suburban couplings that undermine the moral efforts of the residents and their strict adherence to adhesive products and the binding family ties these products suggest. Let me just say duct tape is used both for the purposes of good and evil, pleasure and pain, do-it-yourself plumbing and upholstery repair and a random kidnapping, all occurring in the same rec-room no less, sometimes by people with no pants on and I'll leave it at that so as to not give too much of the plot away and keep your anticipation building for page 193 of the book, which isn't even the halfway point but after you finish this passage you'll be sweating like the proverbial pig and wishing the whole thing were over with already, especially if you're like me and allergic to your own sweat causing you to break out in a nasty rash so repulsive not even your aging landlady (who herself has underarm fat so prodigious it hangs like the wattles of a thousand chickens or the mudflaps on a Kenworth semi-trailer and trails sweat like oil slicks on a heavily-traveled rain-soaked highway), will rub lotion on it.   

Due to Mr. Franzen's continued success and high profile in the literary community, not to mention his frequent Oprah appearances that keep him in the limelight, he's found it necessary to wear a disguise when he goes out in public so as to not be swarmed by the mobs of adoring fans who would tear him to pieces in grocery check-out lines or while picking up his dry cleaning (Mr. Franzen is known for his natty attire, not to mention his fabulous eye wear, and his dry cleaning bills are legendary among the literati). But this intrepid reporter, based on some well-based hearsay, has found out Mr. Franzen has been walking the streets dressed in a pickle costume, thus thwarting the Franzen-ites, as his fans have now taken to calling themselves. In this way he was able to roam the suburban neighborhoods of Mount Olive, North Carolina, where he did much of his research for this novel. Amazingly, this costume attracted no attention from local residents since the town is known as the pickle capital of the U.S.A. and thus, someone wandering around in a pickle outfit is no more out of place than beans in a bowl of chili or the snout on a pig. Witness the above two photos, snapped surreptitiously by my good friend and investigator par excellence, retired security guard, Clifford Niblet, as he followed Mr. Franzen around town, chatting with passersby, doing some banking and stopping for doughnuts and coffee, completely unrecognizable to prying eyes.

The real hinge point of this plot line, where the story suddenly swings in an unexpected direction, is when one day, inexplicably, Teddy Fenoodi wakes up at his usual 6am, bright and crisp as an Ice Capades performer on metamphetamine, but instead of his sensible breakfast he wolfs down his daughter, Serafina-Bitskin's Sugar Krinkles cereal that she keeps hidden in her underwear drawer (the Fenoodees run a healthy household and all sugary junk foods are thus banned from the pantry). His wife, Gubba, is so astounded and then alarmed that she checks his forehead for a fever and implores him to stay at home in bed. She wants to leech him but Teddy puts her mind at rest, then at ease, and then into a semi-comatose state through the infusion of massive amounts of cold medicine in Gubba's morning tea. He then goes to the leech cabinet and amply helps himself to handfuls of leeches that he  applies to Gubba's body in the hopes that the combination of cold medication and slow and gentle bloodletting will keep Gubba immobilized for a few hours. As Gubba settles into a gentle slumber in Teddy's La-Z-Boy recliner, Teddy drives to the pickle factory, marches right past his pickle quality control station, bowls his way past pickle company president Mr. Chornbluth's secretary, Leonarda, looks straight into the upraised unibrow of Mr. Chornbluth himself who's on speaker phone with a phone-sex operator that specializes in wet noodle whipping fetishes and quits his job with nary an explanation or even a curt goodbye. "What's the meaning of this?" Chornbluth exclaims, even while, loud and clear over the speakerphone, the phone-sex operator is screaming, "Yes, yes, whip me with your wet fat noodle you great big pickle king, don't stop until the brine runs down my legs," but Teddy Fenoodee barely registers these sentiments as Chornbluth tries to hide his erection beneath his desk blotter (a father's day present no less from his ungrateful children who fashioned the blotter from the remnants of clothing left under bridges by homeless people as part of their art therapy detox project). Shame colours his face but not enough to make him forget the immense amounts of money he has socked away in offshore accounts or where he murdered and buried his last wife in the Grand Caymans under an underused coconut tree. All part and parcel of the Franzen grand scheme of things. Fact is, and as Franzen leads us to believe, if you're rich enough and decide to wet your pants in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria or The Ritz Carleton, soon everyone will follow suit, wetting their pants too and there'll be a whole new clothing line introduced by swanky designers celebrating public pants-wetting and all its nuances, whether it be in a hotel foyer or a crowded subway car. But I digress with this whole pants-wetting treatise as Franzen sets his sights on much higher themes in which public urination plays only a small part in the sweeping weltschmerz of a specific time in American history, the ennui of suburban enclaves and a nation in conflict with its own past glory.

What few people know is that the model for the clown on Serafina-Bitskin's favorite cereal was none other than Lee-Harvey Oswald. Before he became a communist and scourge of the nation after the JFK assassination, Oswald was a stand-by clown for circuses, rodeos, children's parties, business retreats, presidential elections and any consumer product where clown imagery was needed. Is it just coincidence that Franzen uses Sugar Krinkles in his novel or is he making sly reference to the Oswald-JFK connection and furthering the conspiracy theories with insinuations that there was indeed a second shooter named Bozo or Bongo or Mr. Boggles, hired by the CIA, well-camouflaged in full-clown regalia (after all, who notices a clown in a parade crowd), and hopped-up on sugar-coated rice treats until he was a walking timebomb, a veritable Manchurian Candidate although in this case he was from Des Moines, Illinois and ran a carpet cleaning business that did very well, especially with stubborn blood and pet stains, whether ingrained in shag, Saxony or Berber loop-pile.

With Teddy Fenoodee apparently unemployed, his wife, Gubba, in a distraught state of mind, takes up with an old high-school friend who made it big on the international art scene but has returned, mysteriously, to Mount Olive, where he's working at Zarathustra's Car Wash & Schmaltz Herring Factory. It is none other than Seymour Parfo, known for his controversial video piece, Chicken Bum Licking Man in which he licked the bum of a chicken that was dressed in a tiny Gestapo uniform over a twenty-four hour period, taking breaks only for visits to the bathroom and to replenish his body with nourishing bonito flakes and head cheese wrapped in light, fluffy pastry. On the strength of this video piece alone, Parfo garnered rave reviews and accolades from even the sternest, stuffiest and staph-infected of art critics worldwide and he was soon the darling of billionaire jet-setters and influential galley curators, getting him the best seats in restaurants, airplanes and first dibs at the dizzying array of supermodel lips, both facial and vaginal, sometimes both in one evening. The money and fame also allowed him to acquire the world's most comprehensive collection of antique milking machines, which he kept in a deserted airplane hangar on the outskirts of Berlin where, it was rumored, certain members of the Luftwaffe had taken extensive Watusi lessons in the event that Germany secretly landed on American soil during the war and needed to blend in before the final takeover when Hitler would call them into action using a special dog whistle invented for his beloved two-headed hermaphrodite Doberman, Plitzy, and that could be heard all the way from the fields of Tipperary to the shores of New Jersey.    

Are you still with me, because I'm not. I'm queasy, I'm dizzy, I think my landlady poisoned my tea with wolf bane or else it's just some bad liverwurst with an attractive green fuzz that I found in the back of the fridge. Nevertheless, damn it, I'm going to finish this review because what's a little pain, abdominal cramping and projectile vomiting when Franzen is at stake. So, the stage is set. Parfo's back in town, dallying around with Gubba and meanwhile Teddy, unbeknownst to his wife, family, friends and neighbours, has been engaged by the U.S. military, working on a top secret project that involves disguising guided missiles as pickles to fool the enemy. Teddy's vast knowledge of pickle bodies, be it their shapes, bumps, varying shades of green and even their distinguishing aromas, has placed him as the head of the pickle missile armament division and the fact that his pickle expertise has made him a key figure in tactical weaponry eventually goes to Teddy's head and he begins a second life of war mongering and a fascination for wearing Tilley Endurable hats, pants and safari jackets with more pockets than the Pope has rings.

Meanwhile Serafina-Bitskin begins a romance with the boy next door, Plippo Guntzverhooven, a strapping young lad who, growing up, was strapped daily by his staunch Republican parents, Filtron and Myrtle. This strict upbringing has turned Plippo into a rebellious young man and although the Fenoodees have had nothing to do with their neighbours due to opposing political beliefs, their kids carry on an illicit canoodling, like Romeo and Juliet minus the poetry, pantaloons and pus-filled wounds from drunken swordplay. But as Teddy Fenoodee finds himself more hawk than dove due to his pickle-missile project, he and Filtron discover themselves suddenly friends instead of foes, much to the puzzlement of their wives and children. As for the Fenoodee's son, Ranch, he's seemingly so placid throughout the novel it comes as no surprise on page 295 that he's actually been dead from the outset of the book. Why he died remains a mystery, as does the fact that he's left rotting in his room listening to his iPod but that's the beauty of this work. Mystery abounds and sometimes it just bounds like a gazelle escaping a lion on the African savannah, much like Franzen's words which all leap and bound with a kind of graceful fear that only animals that can both run and poop simultaneously possess and there is a beauty in this that is almost beyond words but not so beyond them that Mr. Franzen wasn't able to find a few and string them together in such a manner as to make readers drool and book club members wet their adult undergarments, especially with the arrival of tea, cookies and a cheese tray during the twenty minute break. Further mysteries confound. Why does Parfo give up an illustrious international art career to return home to wash cars and brine herring? Why does Ranch suddenly rise from the dead and become a senior chartered accountant in a firm that works for a major multinational corporation whose worldwide plastic fabrication plants are killing acres of geoducks with contaminated waste. Why is a manatee driving the school bus? Why does Franzen hint that Serafina-Bitskin's boyfriend's mother was once Lee Harvey Oswald's babysitter, watching the little tyke while Oswald's mother went to various underground communist meetings and threw lavish fondue parties. As they say, the apple never falls very far from the tree unless it's a baked apple with half-baked schemes and if you've ever tried to throw a baked apple then you know what I mean. Franzen's writing is like a uranium deposit for the brain, unstable, radioactive but sure to light up your synapses like a lightning bolt hitting a golfer holding a putter and an umbrella on the 8th green and who also happens to have a metal hip replacement so that the glow from his charred body can be seen from the clubhouse bar. 

There are a select few Franzen-ites who have glommed on to the fact that Mr. Franzen has been evading their spying eyes by dressing in a pickle costume. In the above photo, a group of Franzen-ites from Churchill, Manitoba, in honor of their favourite author, have attired themselves in pickle outfits, ingeniously made by the woman on the far left, Irma Gishkin, which almost rhymes with gherkin, but doesn't. Irma has said that you she used Polski Ogorki dill pickles as her model but others feel that cornichons are closer in resemblance.

What more can I say? He's a modern day Dickens crossed with Slim Pickens with just a touch of Harold Robbins thrown into the mix for a little swank factor. He brings ennui out of the Victorian era and into the contemporary American suburban landscape with a kind of character psychology that resembles topiary of the human psyche, which is nothing to sneeze at (except if you have allergies) when you consider how difficult it is to shape certain types of shrubbery. Especially if you're trying to depict a poodle or a wallaby. 

The author's father and sister loosening up the crowd before a Franzen reading during a book tour with a game of "kick the pickle," based upon an old Pre-Civil War practice of punting pickles back and forth over the Mason-Dixon line in order to inspire the ire between the northern and southern states. It now lives on as a tradition at college football games, especially between Alabama and Notre Dame when they meet at the Pickle Bowl.

In the words of my friend, Schmeltzy Gimmeldick, famous philosopher and hardwood flooring expert (you might have heard his slogan, "If Your Heels Don't Click It's Not A Floor By Gimmeldick), "What is freedom? Freedom alas, freedom avast, freedom ahoy, freedom oh boy, freedom al fredo, al fresco, al dente or with tomatoes." All I can add is that if you like the taste of freedom then this is the book for you although I don't suggest you eat the thing but if you must, do it page by page, in which case you need to chop the paper up finely and put it on maybe a nice piece of rye or sourdough with hot mustard or mayonnaise. Goes down easy just the way freedom should.

 

Reviews Of Books I Have Read

Contusions & Confusions by Lipsy Narvin

Just looking at this image of the author, one immediately knows they're in for some great humour. With a twinkle in his myopic eyes and a chin that quivers like jellied calf's liver after each hefty guffaw, Lipsy Narvin is a delight and national treasure, both at parties and on the literary scene. "Hurrah, Lipsy's here," is the most common refrain when he walks into a room and "Aww, Lipsy's gone," can be heard from the saddened gathering when he leaves.

My tastes in reading have always leaned towards the more serious and heavyweight leaders of the literary arts and their highly-efficient silverfish killing works (hit a silverfish with any edition of Don Quixote, War and Peace, Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers or any of Proust's volumes of A Remembrance of Things Past and you'll be hard-pressed to find any evidence of the silverfish's previous existence on planet earth), but I have been known to occasionally whack my funny bone on humorous writing and the odd end table and sometimes it's not my funny bone but my boner that I whack on a piece of furniture, deliberately I might add, to deflate the unexpected erections that befall me at the most unlikely of moments like during the Lord's Prayer, the national anthem, images of Muuamar Gaddafi's offspring playing polo in Leipzig or reruns of Murder She Wrote that I sometimes watch with my landlady while she darns her support hose. Either way, I find humour energizes the mind for more serious pursuits, especially after I've squeezed the last laugh from my belly and all the other places that last laugh may hide, for example in the sphincter muscles, prostate gland, urinary tract and occasionally the upper parts of the nostrils near the sinus cavities. In fact, it's this practice of extreme laughing that has led to my use of adult diapers as sometimes laughter is not the only thing that streams from my body copiously when the moment catches me, but it's of my opinion that any release, whether auditory or bodily, is good for the body, mind and soul, though perhaps not so good for the carpeting or upholstery.

I call these protective undergarments "soul catchers." As laughter floods from the body, so do some of the body's earthly essences, a completely natural expression of the body's reaction to humour and an indicator of the healthy soul that lies deep within. I've always felt to lose these precious juices and liquids is such a waste, not to mention costly because of the constant cleaning to get the stains out of your pants, but I feel the moniker, "adult diapers" does no justice to the essential and life-affirming function these undergarments perform as the soul is invigorated and the bowels and urinary tracts cleansed when laughter, such as that induced by the works of Lipsy Narvin, reaches its crescendo.

But enough about my undergarments, my undercarriage and my unconscious. Let's get on with the review and to do that we must first examine the source of Lipsy Narvin's humour. They say every great comedic mind is born out of tragedy, depression, self-loathing, rage, low self-esteem, bad diet and ill-fitting shoes. The effects of corns and bunions on a person's psyche cannot be underestimated, especially if they're already predisposed to the other conditions mentioned. Add a bunion to a person already primed to fly off the handle at a moment's notice, especially one who has been fed only corn chips, corn dogs, burgers, bratwurst and canned chili and you have a recipe for disaster and a probable roundhouse to the old schnozzola. But with Lipsy Narvin, as befitting a great humorist, the psychological makeup runs deeper than that and the bunion and bratwurst and burger on a bun is just the tip of the iceberg for below the frigid waters of a tumultuous sea of the human psyche lies the foundation of Lipsy's inspiration. For Lipsy was born a girl, lovingly named Lipodestra upon birth, coddled and cuddled and cared for as any beloved daughter would, but alas, Lipodestra was not to be. For Lipsy felt the calling, the yearning the urging, even at the earliest age, before full consciousness and motor controls and potty training had set in that she was a man at heart, regardless of whether there was anything to circumcise. As Lipsy has said in his great, rib-tickling essay, Penis Prima Donnas, "We judge so much of a man by his penis when really it's all about the neck muscles, nostril hair, preference for stubby heels and sweat glands that may demand more than just a light feminine product to mask the musk of a male trapped in a woman's body as in my case, so that, if one has a vagina rather than a dingdong for instance, and the above criteria are a match, well, so long sister and hello brother and you can stuff your pink ribbons and bow ties up your keister because this girl's going places in a man's world, with or without an Adams Apple or scrotum-cradling underpants."

Does the woman on the far right remind you of someone? Yep, that's right. It's Lispy Narvin before the sex-change when he was the beguiling Lipodestra and a singer in a religious trio. Their number one hit, Jesus, Use Me Like A Hooker In Bethlehem Behind the Dumpster Of An Olive Garden, took the Bible Belt by storm, causing many a man to loosen his belt when the wife wasn't looking and give a little squeeze to Jesus' staff before whacking it on a bible to expel such demon thoughts. As an added twist, once the sex-change was complete, Lipsy married the woman on the far left, Gladdis Lorbog, known not only for her formidable beehive hair-do but also her lilting soprano voice that was said to be able to drive the rabies right out of a mad dog frothing and convulsing on the pavement.

It was not long after Lipsy's sex-change that he hit his stride in the world of humour writing, regaling community center audiences both small and large (larger audiences usually turned out on $1.50 hot dog with a juice box or pop nights), with his painful, poignant, piquant but always funny observations. Borrowing from both his personal life and from the lives of his friends, enemies, strangers, his dentist, tax accountant, butcher, Vietnamese masseuse at the Grateful Endings Massage Parlor he liked to frequent and the one-armed man named Fred that he played tennis with every second Friday, soon publishers were breaking down the door of his basement apartment trying to get first dibs at publishing his essays. It's been many books later but Contusions & Confusions still remains his seminal work, maybe due to the fact of youth being on his side at the time and thus his semen production running at full tilt, not to mention the willingness to take risks that's an inherent trait of the young. Then again, maybe it was due to his new penis and the freedom of knowing that with it he could pee anywhere he liked, either incognito or just waving it around in a public display of power and urine spray. But as he writes in the title piece, all this new strutting around and cock-of-the-walk behavior was not without its setbacks. The opening paragraph says it all and each time I read it I weep, I laugh, I even emit a little gas, such is the power of a Lispy Narvin sentence and the degrees of depth his humour hits, like the submarine in Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea that's always getting in trouble and sinking to the ocean's bed.
After my first contusion I was very confused. I awoke in the gutter lane of a bowling alley wearing a beehive hair-do and clutching a rolling pin. Not a bowling pin mind you, but a rolling pin. Like I'd just come from Satan's kitchen and dead kitten sausage was on the menu. This contusion had me completely confusioned. And if that's not a word so be it, I'll eat my delusions and the inserts in your bowling shoes too. After they've been deodorized of course. Not that I mind stinky feet. My feet smell like old meat. Vultures circle me constantly thinking I'm some decomposing carcass. I'm just a hop, skip and jump away from being floated down the Ganges. Anyway, my forehead was black and blue from where I had been struck with a nine-iron and my blood had clotted, covering my face in what I perceived, upon first lick, as a very tasty crust. But pizza this was not. It was all coming back to me or maybe I was coming back to it. Or maybe me and it were meeting somewhere in between, some kind of neutral common ground where the barbed wire didn't catch our pants so easily. Either way, I knew I'd double-bogeyed on the 16th and my partner had gone all methamphetamine Arnold Palmer on me. Not that I blamed him in the least. A double-bogey, especially on a par 3, can drive any golf partner crazy and it's a good thing it wasn't a triple-bogey or you could've fed my innards to the gophers after I'd been gutted like a pig on the green and putted my testicles into the cup from a good eight feet. But I'm a bowler and not a golfer so I had plenty of excuses but excuses are only for the weak or those who can't lift a bowling ball with their scrotum.  

Here's a couple of Lipsy's pals sharing a laugh at the scene of Lipsy's bowling alley contusion experience. From left to right, Al Horstein, Reggie Botswold, Frank Yuntsmeyer and Seymour Kakinfrance. You can just make out Lipsy's hand and foot behind the pin setting machine, re-enacting his delirious state as the bowling balls rolled down the lane relentlessly.

In his next essay in the collection, Daughter of a Ditch Digger, Son of a Bitch, Lipsy vents a little spleen, spits a little venom and spritzes a little aftershave on his confused upbringing and the inability of his parents, Fritz and Gertie Narvin, to understand and deal with the masculine yearnings surging beneath his prettily flowered dress and pig-tailed head. Fritz, a ditch digger with the county and winner of the Pickle Lake Ditch Digger's Award for Exemplary Service to the Community, does have a moment of illumination when he realizes that the son he never had actually resides in his daughter's body and might turn out to be a ditch digger like himself and carry on the family tradition (the Narvins come from a long line of ditch diggers dating all the way back in their ancestral family tree to Bulgarian gypsies that settled in 16th century England and were soon digging ditches for royalty and stealing their poultry). Gertie, meanwhile, secretly blames the whole thing on her affair with Morty DeMarco, foreman at the local meat-packing plant and who is actually the father of Lipsy/Lipodestra Narvin. If you compare the picture of Lipsy today and the image of DeMarco in the photo below, the resemblance is uncanny as is both of their insatiable cravings for goat meat and the fact both men have prized hacksaw collections.

Here is Morty DeMarco, the real father of Lispy Narvin. Foreman at the Calypso Meat-Packing and Rendering Plant, one of the major employers of most Pickle Lake residents, DeMarco is also a meat home hobbyist and is seen here with his patented goat and lamb meat-shaving lathe and his treasured hand-forged knives made by the blind Albanian monks of the St. Galoobian Monastery. Don't let his intimidating appearance fool you. DeMarco is very popular in the Pickle Lake community and he and his meat-shaving lathe are frequent guests at children's birthday parties where the kids are allowed to shave as much meat as they can eat from the ample carcasses DeMarco so generously donates to the family's birthday festivities. He's also been known to set up his captivating slideshow illustrating how he smuggled his beloved knives out of Albania by dressing as a Russian prostitute in fetching hot pants and supplying free hand-jobs to border guards. Though these experiences still give him nightmares and he's been know to wake up screaming out the names of obscure Albanian villages, Morty never regrets the choices he made and treasures each of his knives as if they were his own children.

As Lipsy recounts in the essay: Once I found out that Morty DeMarco, that gourd of a human being was actually my father, I was just happy that my other father, Fritz, was dead by then (by the way, as a celebrated ditch digger he actually dug his own grave only days before he died in some kind of strange premonition of the brain aneurysm that was to take his life), and didn't live to learn the truth about Gertie and her whoring ways. When Morty DeMarco, on hearing of my father's death, offered to put Fritz on his meat lathe and take off some of his body weight as to make him more presentable for an open-casket funereal, I almost spat in DeMarco's face. But then I remembered that I was the son of a ditch digger and had a reputation and my father's legacy to uphold in the community so I simply grabbed DeMarco's testicles, gave them a hard squeeze and muttered, "Give me a light, shrimp, and make it snappy," as I waved a long, Cohiba Lanceros Cuban cigar in his face. Let me tell you, I've never seen a man drop a hacksaw faster than DeMarco did at that moment, except for my friend Muncie who cut off his thumb in wood shop in the 7th grade. I actually found the severed thumb under the vice bench but I quickly hid it in my pocket, dried it out and to this day I wear it like a talisman around my neck and occasionally kiss it, like you would a picture of a saint or the toes of Jesus Christ on the cross or the Virgin Mary's image baked into a breakfast croissant, to bring me inspiration. In fact, I truly believe that if it wasn't for that dried-up old thumb, I'd still be lingering like a moldy old odour or my Uncle Glutzy on the pull-out sofa at Thanksgiving, in my basement apartment rather than living in a swanky penthouse suite with my cheese emulsifiers and antique hacksaw collection, having my pick from any of the women with unwanted body hair that I meet at the laundromat I frequent to keep myself grounded and in touch with the proletariat class from where I once came and still come, but in vaginas rather than in old dollar-store dishcloths or lint-covered athletic socks that I find under my Louis IV canopied bed which I bought with my first royalty cheque. But back to DeMarco. He couldn't get his hand under his blood and meat-grease smeared apron quick enough fishing for a disposable lighter and when he finally found one and lit my cigar with a trembling hand, sweat beading his balding, gourd-shaped head from fear and my unrelenting grip on his testes, I hissed in his face, close enough that he could smell the rotting goat meat between my teeth, "One day I'm going to turn you on your own meat lathe while you're still alive and once you're flayed I'm gonna make you dig your own grave and line it with used gauze from the hospital trauma ward and then throw you in there and make you sing an Olivia Newton John medley while I cover you with dirt until you're buried alive." That was the second-to-last time I saw Morty DeMarco. The last time was when he was squeezed back into his hot pants and working a truck-stop glory-hole outside of Ethelsville, Alabama, after being run out of Pickle Lake due to a tainted goat meat scandal at the Calypso meat-packing plant. Need I say I succumbed to the temptation, especially with my new penis in place and though Morty couldn't see whose penis he was fellating due to the wall between us, I somehow felt this avenged my father, Fritz, for being deceived by Morty and my whore-mongering mother, Gertie, and subsequently going to his grave not knowing the travesty played out behind his back by Morty and Gertie on a wide range of stained and squeaky motel beds while Fritz slaved away unwittingly in the cold ditches of Pickle Lake. The oddness of being given a blowjob by my own illegitimate father was not lost on me and the added strangeness of my recent sex-change making this event even possible in the first place really was a bit of a brain twister but hey, that's why we have guys like Sigmund Freud and I realized I didn't have time to decipher such things. I had places to go and people to see and a blowjob from my backstabbing father through a glory-hole in an Alabama truck-stop wasn't going to stop me from achieving my dreams. 

In the above passage, Lipsy makes mention of calling Morty DeMarco a 'shrimp' and this is no coincidence. The DeMarco family, for generations, have all been dwarfs and midgets, as evidenced in the above photograph taken at the annual DeMarco family reunion seance and picnic. Morty was actually the first in the line not to be born a little person and for this he has garnered both the admiration and disgust of his extended family. Some felt he should have been drowned in the river at birth, others have been only more than happy to use him to reach items on the higher shelves at the grocery store on their shopping trips. As an added note it is amazing how much food these little folk can put away at the dinner table.

Whew! That's all I can say when Lipsy Narvin starts laying down the words like he's driving home railroad spikes into the brains of unsuspecting readers. The above selection carries all the poignancy of a baby seal being clubbed to death on a barren and icy Arctic sea and yet the humour shines through because if you don't get a chuckle out of that last little scenario in an Alabama truck-stop then maybe you should have your funny bone examined. Or possibly removed. Honestly, stuff like this doesn't grow on trees and if it did I wonder what fruit it would bear and whether you could even make juice out of it or a nice compote or jam or jelly. Nevertheless, fruit-bearing or not, Lipsy is mining the fruit of his loins or someone's loins and it's loin chops and loin cloths for everyone as far as this reader is concerned. The final essay in the book is a fitting denouement to Lipsy's many adventures and astute observations. Entitled, Hacksaws and Rabbit Paws, it's truly an insight into Lipsy Narvin's go-getter attitude and his refusal to take 'no' for an answer, even when surgeons told him he'd make an even uglier man than a woman. It's also a wonderful testament to his entrepreneurial spirit, even if a few hundred cute bunnies had to lose their feet so Lipsy could fulfill his dreams. But let's let Lipsy tell it best in this side-splitting excerpt.

As well as being a preeminent humorist, Lipsy is also know for his authoritative works on hacksaw techniques. The top diagram is from his manual, Hacksaw Do's & Dont's, A Primer For Beginner Hacksaw Enthusiasts, and whether you're a neophyte or a pro, this volume is filled with indispensable information for all your hacksaw needs and queries. Felcher Blangford, president of the North American Hacksaw Society, has stated that no one should even be allowed to handle a hacksaw until they have read this book. Pictured directly above is Lipsy's revered hacksaw collection, framed, for display purposes by large, machinist's hammers. Once a year Lipsy opens his collection to the public and line-ups form around the block of the condo development where he lives as hacksaw lovers from around the world gather for a glimpse at this hacksaw mecca.

 All I knew, even at an early age, smart child that I was, was that penises didn't grow on trees so if I wanted to ditch the old hoo-hah and get myself a ding-dong, it was going to take a little more than wishes made while blowing out birthday candles or asking Santa for a shiny new schlong with a purple bow tied around it. What I really understood, as a ditch-digger's daughter, was that you had to work hard for your money, whether you wanted to buy a Thanksgiving turkey, a pogo stick, a carpet sample book or hormone treatments. No one was going to hand you a penis on a silver tray although I do believe in the surgery, it did lie on a stainless steel silver-hued tray for a while before they attached it to my body. Anyway, one day while out foraging for flugleberries and fungus in the woods near my parent's place, I realized, after hearing so much rustling and bustling about in the surrounding shrubbery, that Pickle Lake was rife with wild bunnies. At that moment I had a brainstorm that hit like a spark from a downed power line and I thought, "Hello rabbits, goodbye penis envy or goodbye rabbits, hello testes," and so my fortune was made. The residents of Pickle Lake are a superstitious bunch and banking on that and the fact that people everywhere were probably pretty much the same, I decided to start my own lucky rabbit's foot business and make ends meet while adding the meat to my end and in the end the end justifiying the means as the dead, footless rabbits started piling up around me. Truth be told, I did shed a bit of a tear each time a little thumper met his or her maker, pink noses twitching in anticipation of the carrot I dangled in front of them while my other hand located a ball-peen hammer for stunning them and then a hacksaw to finish the work. It turned out my lucky rabbit's foot business was a hit and the orders were keeping me hopping, even though my quarry could no longer hop but that's the cost of free enterprise. It wasn't long before I was branching out to neighbouring townships and counties as I had decimated the local Pickle Lake rabbit population but ambition and penis envy drove me forward through the slaughter like a Viking trying to achieve Valhalla. Do I regret the little bunny lives it cost in order for me to realize my dreams? A good question but the answer is best left for another time because I'm having too much fun melting urinal pucks with my steady and copious stream.

There you have it. Lipsy Narvin at his best. It's no wonder the man is so revered for both his hacksaws and his humor because when you're an original everything is second best and no doubt made overseas, whether it be a rabbit's foot, a penis, an adult diaper, a hacksaw or a humorous essay. All I can say is Lipsy's words will leap right off the page, land on your pants and give you a lap dance, albeit one from an overly large and very hairy man but you won't notice from all the gas-passing and laughing you'll be doing. Kudos to you Mr. Narvin, kudos to you. May you live another day to suffer another contusion so that your legion of fans everywhere might bruise their funny bones on the sofas and end tables of your despair and confusion.